I've googled and checked my Oxford Dictionary of Idioms to no avail. What does 'to sheet home' mean exactly? Could this be an idiom only found in an Australian context? Working through Google I found a definition of the phrae

At 13:49:31 on Tue, 24 May 2005, Phil C. (Email Removed) wrote in (Email Removed): Mrs C. teaches English and students tell her that they find her much easier to follow than some other native ... to communicate to monoglots in German and Spanish

Where can I find online discussion of American English speech patterns that create problems for foreign listeners. I am not referring to phrasal verbs or idioms, but to the colloquial style of actual speech. I have noticed that Americans often

We've been around and around with that ... happens, that's one angle on the derivation. There are others. I always took "I could care less" to mean "Don't tempt me to care less than I do now. It ... I interpret the

As far as my own usage is concerned, I prefer ... comedies," and certain fixed forms such as "for goodness' sake." In my experience, "for goodness' sake" is usually pronounced "for goodness sakes". Yet

William R Ward wrote on 11 Jan 2005: "ELF (English as a Lingua-Franca) is against promoting a single English that all learners in the whole world should model." Don't you think the term "lingua franca" applied to English is

(snip) In Britain the idiom version is invariably "if ... inversion is contained within dialogue apparently uttered by an American. With the Frances Hodgson Burnett example I read the inversion as being part of the way in which the

(snip) In Britain the idiom version is invariably "if ... inversion is contained within dialogue apparently uttered by an American. With the Frances Hodgson Burnett example I read the inversion as being part of the way in which the

The Head of the House of Coombe by Burnett, Frances Hodgson ... Her eyes glowed with actual rapture. "My word! That's a ... if I ever saw one." "What makes you think so?" (snip) In Britain the idiom version is invariably

Richard Maurer wrote on 19 Dec 2004: Any phrase whose meaning can't be determined from the meaning of each word in it is idiomatic. Not a clear explanation of what 'idiomatic' might mean. This would be better stated as "Any phrase